The interwebs are buzzing today with the news that GOP Gov. Robert McDonnell of Virginia has declared April “Treason in Defense of Slavery” month. But what’s not getting enough attention is the fact that the group that convinced McDonnell to sign the declaration are a bunch of neo-Confederates.

There is still enough energy left in the wounded serpent that is the Southern Strategy to lash out in a furious flowering of poison to corrode our moral fiber. The question is whether the corporate interests that back this strategy in order to keep their taxes low (or non-existent) will finally forsake the oncological, selfish model of capitalism for the more civic-minded one that prevails in Europe and elsewhere.

Yeah, this is pretty rich. Here’s a guy who promised to woo African American voters with fried chicken, refused to criticize Glenn Beck for saying that the president was a “white culture”-hating racist, and who just a few days ago dropped the Native American equivalent of “nigger” on national teevee.

(Please welcome Randall L. Kennedy to the comments here at the FDL Salon. The author of the controversial best-seller Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word has dared to step on the third rail of race once again with publication of Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal.)

In preparation for the salon, I dutifully pulled out the highlighter to mark off passages of interest in Randall Kennedy’s Sellout: